The Biggest Neon Buffet Outside of Vegas

I can’t believe what’s on my plate: Cajun mahi mahi, salmon sushi, a potato skin topped with cheese and crunchy fish roe, a Korean barbecued beef rib, creamed corn, garlic bread and two kinds of marinated seaweed. If there’d been room, I could have added a tortilla roll-up, pork in Marsala sauce, Chinese cashew chicken and miso soup.

Shilla Seafood Buffet may have a Korean name, but the food is international. As for the ambience, it’s strictly from Vegas--glittering chandelier in the middle of a cavernous dining space and all. Richard Chung Lee, who also owns a restaurant in Las Vegas, was so taken with the lavish hotel buffets there that he decided to re-create them here.

So the immense buffet curves in and out, leading from sushi at one end to Chinese dishes at the other. With neon signs marking the sections, the only confusion will be on your plate, unless you exert a degree of control unusual at buffets.

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You could, for example, eat nothing but Korean food--barbecued chicken and beef (the sign on the grill says to limit yourself to two pieces, but nobody’s watching), chap chae (a chow mein-like noodle and vegetable combination), hot pumpkin soup and half a dozen varieties of kimchi pickles.

Or you could pretend you’re at an all-you-can-eat sushi place. The sushi section is notable for the biggest hunk of wasabi I’ve ever seen. Spoon a bit into a dish and dilute it with soy sauce at your table.

One day, the chefs were wrapping rice and spicy tuna into seaweed cones and handing them out as if at a sushi bar, but most of the sushi is made in advance and sits on wooden planks, ready for you to serve yourself. The routine seafood toppings are available, but I liked the simplicity of a single avocado slice tied to the rice ball with a band of nori seaweed.

The sushi section also has salad-like cold marinated dishes (there’s a separate salad bar for Western-style salads). Here you might find squid cut to look like fat noodles in sesame sauce, or marinated salmon with sliced onions. I liked something that looked like fish cake coated with shredded carrot; it actually turned out to be a root vegetable called toran coated with fish (surimi, the famous imitation crab meat; the crab salad is also imitation). Slim asparagus in a light dressing appears regularly, and sometimes there’s a carrot and green pea salad with a sweet, creamy dressing.

Seaweed salads are also on hand. But look for jellyfish salad with cucumber at the Chinese end of the buffet, along with cold five-spice beef and the positively addictive glazed sweet potato chunks, crackly crisp and candy-sweet.

If you want plain American food, no problem. Some people heap platters with smoked turkey, deli meats and cheeses, even baked ham with pineapple. Chicken nuggets might turn up, or baked honey-mustard chicken. And once there was (rather well done) roast beef.

Italian dishes include small pizzas, plain ricotta-filled lasagna and big squid rings stuffed ravioli fashion with squash, spinach and ricotta. Western-style breads, displayed at the start of the buffet, are as varied as the rest of the food.

At dinner, Shilla seriously delivers on its claim to be a seafood buffet. There’s a mountain of snow crab legs. I’ve seen king crab legs and lobster claws too, not to mention boiled shrimp. Creamed scallops or lobster come in shell-shaped dishes. And salmon and tuna sashimi appear in the sushi area, along with marinated squid, green mussels and sea cucumber. Tempting though they were, I was led astray by sweet, spicy chicken wings that were just a bit caramelized. Very nice.

After filling your plate several times, you may wish you’d eaten less when you realize there’s a separate dessert buffet. It includes sensible fresh fruit, but it’s hard to pass up the pastries, though they can be uneven (the blueberry and pumpkin tarts are quite good). And who could find fault with chocolate chip cookies? Fortunately the cookies are barely bite-size, so you can try several kinds.

The most interesting dessert, though, is Korean su jung kwa, a cold, clear cinnamon-spiced liquid that you sprinkle with pine nuts. It’s exactly what you need after partaking too liberally of Shilla’s generous buffet.

BE THERE

Shilla Seafood Buffet Restaurant, 674 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles; (213) 387-5678. Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; dinner 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 5:30 to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. No alcohol. Lot parking. Major credit cards. Lunch buffet $11.95 ($12.95 Saturday and Sunday), dinner $18.95 (Friday through Sunday). What to Get: Korean barbecued beef ribs, marinated salmon, spicy chicken wings, cold five-spice beef, glazed sweet potato, su jung kwa.